The Convergence of Literacies New communications and information technologies pose significant challenges for their users.They require the rapid development and continual updating of a diversity of skills, competences and knowledge, from the already-familiar to the very-new, and from the most basic to the highly sophisticated.In academic research, these skills and knowledge requirements are increasingly framed in terms of "literacy".In this chapter, we map out a research agenda on new literacies.In so doing, we draw together the traditions of media literacy and information literacy.As broadcast, audiovisual, and print media converge with telecommunications, computing, and information systems, research on media literacy and information literacy could hardly remain separate.Indeed, despite their contrasting disciplinary backgrounds, theories, and methods, these research traditions have an increasingly similar object of inquiry: the public's understanding of and effective engagement with media, information and communication technologies of all kinds.We advocate a converged or at least dialogical concept of media and information "literacies", arguing that each tradition has much to learn from the other, although we accept that some differences must remain.The term "literacy" itself may need some defense, being often contested, seemingly restricted to a past world of print, and stigmatizing of those who lack it.We would point the reader to historical and contemporary debates about print literacy (Kintgen et al., 1988;Luke, 1989), to the broad literature on 'reading the world' (Freire & Macedo, 1987), and to the fastgrowing field of digital-or cyber-literacy (Kress, 2003;Tyner, 1998;Warnick, 2002).Williams (1983) traces the historical emergence of the term 'literacy' from 'literature'.'Literature' once combined the adjectival meaning of being discerning and knowledgeable according to the 'standards of polite learning' with the noun which describes a body of writing of nationally-acknowledged aesthetic merit.Today, 'literature' refers to the latter alone, with its own adjective, 'literary', while from the end of the nineteenth century, 'literacy' (and its adjective, 'literate') "was a new word invented to express the achievement and possession of what were increasingly seen as general and necessary skills" (p.188), this becoming necessary as the ability to read spread beyond the elite, resulting in ever more people with the skills to read but who were not familiar with the literary canon.Hence, with the rise of mass literacy, many people became literate but not literary, and the uses of literacy became increasingly subject to regulation (Luke, 1989); we see a similar process occurring today with new forms of media.Technologies never stand still and, therefore, nor do the literacies associated with their use.While some scholars prefer to introduce new terms to characterize these supposedly new skills (e.g., "digital literacy", "cyber-literacy", "internet literacy", "network literacy"), others emphasize the continuities between old and new media and information communication technologies by extending the term "media literacy" or "literacy" in general to encompass a converged concept of media and information literacies.We favor the latter approach, for this invites us to seek out continuities and to examine claims to "newness" carefully, rather than to endorse a proliferation of new terms.Such questions are pressing not only in academic discussions.In policy circles also, the notion of literacy is coming to the fore.In the UK, Section 11 of the Communications Act (2003) establishes a role for the communications regulator, to "promote media literacy" among the UK population, for "through confident use of communications technologies people will gain a better understanding of the world around them and be better able to engage with it" (Ofcom, 2004b, paragraph 3).Ofcom defines media literacy as "the ability to access,
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